Gluten Freebird

This is a tale of a good treat and a bad treat. Both gluten-free and both from Kinnikinnick, but only one is worth eating.

Let’s start with the loser.

After a particularly raucous solstice party last weekend, I baked up some chocolate chip cookies from a bag of Kinnikinnick mix.

The mix had been hanging in my pantry for a few months, so the post-solstice hangover was the perfect opportunity to crack open an easy-bake mix. “These will surely do the trick,” I thought. But it wasn’t to be.

The cookies had a crumbly texture, but the real problem was the vegetal flavor.

I tried adding orange zest, cinnamon, doubling up on the chocolate chips and adding brown sugar, but the dough still tasted like ground legumes with sugar. Verdict: Make your own. It’s worth a few shakes of the wrist to get a flavor that isn’t beany and distracting.

Now for the good news: Kinnikinnick’s gluten-free Cinnamon-Sugar Donuts are delicious. They’re also dairy- and soy-free.

The instructions called for just 20 seconds in the microwave, but I had to nuke mine for about a minute to fully heat the middles.

There was nothing second-rate about these. I plunged them into my coffee and felt like I was right back at Cherry Hill Farm, the now defunct maker of my favorite donuts.

The donuts were spongy and soft, flavored well with no big aftertaste. I bought them at My Organic Market. You should, too.